Scott Tepper: My 2007 Essen

Well, I’m back.  I apologize that this column is submitted a little late, but I just got back into town after traveling….um…I’m too tired to figure out how long I’ve been up because it’s been quite a while since my flight from Frankfurt left at 8:00a, and I had to leave Essen on the 2:00a train to make it into Frankfurt early enough.  So if you find any typos in the review of the past 9 days below, you can attribute it to the sleep deprivation.

Friday, Oct. 12, 9:15pm.  Chicago time.  When boarding the plane to Frankfurt (yea!) I ask one of the stewardesses what “hansa” in Lufthansa means.  I already knew that Luft means air.  She struggles for a couple of minutes trying to come up with a good definition.  She throws out “corporation”, “business”, “group”, but is not really satisfied with those meanings.  With the use of her circular hand movements, I offer up “Alliance”, and she says that’s it.

Friday, 9:30pm.  Chicago.  When the Lufthansa safety video plays (with strangely Christmas Express type creepy animated passengers) I only understand about 15% of the narration and worry that the last year of lessons with my German tutor were wasted on me.

10:15pm In the air. When the stewardess comes by with beverages, I ask, in German, if they have orange juice.  And she understood me!  At least I won’t go thirsty in Germany.

10:30pm.  In the air. Hot, wet, lemon-scented towels are passed out.  MmmmmMmmm lemony…

11:15p I take my second “No Jet-lag” pill that I ordered from Magellan on a whim when I decided to buy a luggage scale.  Supposedly these help you with jet lag by ingesting them every 2 hours during your flight.  Don’t know if they’ll work, but it’s worth a try and they don’t taste bad…

11:16p-3:25a Alternate between reading the rules for Race for the Galaxy and taking breaks to watch The Simpsons Movie and Mr. Bean’s Vacation on the plane’s videoscreen.  I look around and I am the only person in my section of the place with the light on over my seat.  Everyone else is asleep.

5:18a (Chicago time_ When the pilot announces over the intercom in German that we’re going to be landing in 30 minutes and the weather in Frankfurt is nice, I actually understand him.  Whoo-Hoo!

1:55p Now on Frankfurt time.  I buy a ticket for the train to Köln.  The agent asks if I want a regular or first class seat, so I decide to see what first class is like.  After buying the ticket, I realize that I just paid the equivalent of about $127.00 for the ticket just to Köln.  Ack!  That could have been 4 new games!

2:09p Frankfurt train station.  I misinterpret the signs and am at the totally opposite end of the train from the first class car.  I start running, but the trains in Germany aren’t like the ones in the US.  They run on time, and one of the agents prompts me to board because the train only waits about a minute or two.  I end up in the dining car and decide not to trek through the whole train to get to first class.  I order the “Fitness-Frustuck” which turns out to be bread with jam and butter, and Muesli which seems to be a mixture of yogurt, granola and fruit.

2:12p En route to Köln.  I get a text message from Christian, my Couchsurfing host.  He asks if I arrived safely.  I start to text a reply to him, but texting in German is hard.  I keep sending him messages with only parts of words.  He replies, asking if I just want to sleep when I get in.  I answer that there’ll be no sleeping.  I’m here to have fun.

2:50p On the train.  When I pay for my meal, I’m unsure if, or how I’m supposed to leave a tip.  I know that tipping in Germany is not like in the US.  I decide to leave a Euro behind on the table.  That shouldn’t be offensive for a 7 Euro meal.

Saturday 4:00p-Sun 1:00p See last weeks column

1:30p I find the Köln train ticket office and ask for a ticket (Fahrkarte) to Essen.  The ticket agent tells me that the next train leaves in 3 minutes, but I ask her for the next train because there’s no way I’d be able to find the proper track while lugging around my 2 suitcases, tradeshow banner, and computer bag in less than 3 minutes. 

2:09p My train comes, and even after the last train debaucle where I paid for a first class ticket and ended up sitting in the dining car, I still have trouble getting on the right car.  This time I bought a 2nd class ticket, and waited under the sign where supposedly a 2nd class car would stop.  Of course, when the train pulled in, I was right next to a 1st class car and had to run 3 cars down to find one of the 2nd class cars.

2:14p Looking out the window I notice that the walls running along the train tracks are covered in graffiti.  But this isn’t like the graffiti that I’m used to seeing in Chicago, which is usually black and white.  Every scrawl that is spray-painted along the tracks in Koln is in a mixtures of vivid colors: yellows, purples, blues and oranges which splay out in a joyful effect like crepe paper at a birthday party.

2:20p-3:00p Read through the rules of Amyitis again.

3:05p Yea!  I’m in Essen again!  Whoo-Hoo!

4:30p-1:00p Check into the hotel, wander the city a little, have dinner in the nearby restaurant, and read through game rules to help me fall asleep.

1:30a-6:00a Keep waking up because my body thinks it’s the middle of the day instead of the middle of the night.

7:09a Monday Wake up and realize that I would need to start setting the alarm so that I can get in the habit of getting up earlier, since when the show starts we usually meet in the dining room for breakfast at 7:00a.

7:45a Monday Go down to breakfast and chat with the owner of the hotel who remembers me and says that my German has improved since last year.

8:20a Monday Head back to my room to work on my Essen shopping list.  I had already printed out the maps of the convention hall.  Using a highlighter, I color in the booths that I want to visit and write in the names of the games they have that I’m interested in.  I worry that with the exchange rate between Euros and dollars being so bad right now, I will really need to limit the number of games I purchase at the fair.

10:20a Mon Head out into town in search of a Bayern-Munich soccer jersey as a gift for a friend.  This proves to be more difficult than I had expected.  The hotel desk clerk sends me to a department store that doesn’t have any sports clothes. I decide to walk to the city center which has a wider selection of stores.  On the way I stop at a little bakery/restaurant for lunch where, when I greet the baker/server, she starts speaking so quickly that I have to stop her and explain that I’m just learning to speak German.  So she…starts…speaking…like…this…, which really embarrasses me.  Eventually she sets into a moderate conversational pace that I can understand and that doesn’t make me feel so stupid when I ask her about all the different meals that are available.  I decide on some sort of brown breaded slab of something that is layered with cheese on top.  I have no idea what kind of meat it was but it ends up being DELICIOUS! 

12:10p Mon.  I reach the main train station(Hauptbahnhof) information desk, which has proved to be very helpful in the past.  The woman behind the desk becomes a little flustered by my request of a store that sells sports clothes because she has no idea where to direct me.  She asks a coworker who says I need to travel to another city to find something like that.  In the end, the first aide suggests that I try the city information office which is just across the street.  The information bureau suggests a sports shop that is just 3 blocks down in the main shopping area, which ends up having the sports jersey I was looking for.  Success!

1:05 Even with all ubiquitious coffeeshops in the area, I decide to sit in a Starbucks to write out postcards and study more game rules.  I know that they’ll be ok with me sitting for a while and don’t know if the same is true for other non-chain shops.

Tues, 10:15am Jay arrives at the hotel.  He puts his bags in his room, and we head over to the Messe (convention hall).  Already it appears that a lot of the booths are in the advanced stages of being put together.  This is in contrast to last year at the similar time when the late finishing of the previous week’s tradeshow inhibited the construction of the Spiel booths. 

The Kosmos booth has a particularly striking attraction obviously to draw attention to their new game based on The Golden Compass movie/book, they have a life-sized stuffed polar bear armored in golden plating, with a small girl in a snowsuit riding on top.  I normally don’t take many pictures of the trade shows now, because they all start to look the same after a while, but this display was so cool that just like the thousands of Spiel attendees, I became a gawking tourist and felt compelled to take a picture.  Unfortunately the bear was not enough to overcome the standard movie-tie-in game mechanisms of The Golden Compass because no one I talked to had bought the game.

The coolest game mannequin ever

Though Rio Grande Games was in approximately the same spot as last year, Jay made a few changes to the booth.  Instead of having our space lie up against the side of the hall, this year we now were almost a “floating” island with our offices lining up against the back of another booth.  We now also had two lectern like desks in the booth where two of our demoers could sell the games, as opposed to last year where we were only demoing games in the booth and directing people to the Abacus Spiele booth if they wanted to buy RGG games.  This year, with the Abacus Spiele game, Zooloretto, winning the Spiel Des Jahres, they would have more than enough to concentrate on without having to worry about selling RGG titles.

After walking through the halls a bit, we came back to find that the game tables and chairs had been delivered to our booth.  Thomas, the representative from the company that ships the Rio Grande games in Germany, stopped by to drop off the key to the container just outside the hall where they had already deposited some of the games we were expecting.  This year we were sharing the container with Ystari games, so that if we needed more games during the show, the factory could deposit them in the container and we could restock our office from there.

Now, let me take a step back and explain something about the production and availability of games for Essen.  In the weeks before every show, I ask Jay to send me the rules for all the games that I’ll be demoing so I can start familiarizing myself with them.  This year, about two weeks before the show, Jay sent me the rules for the following games:  Amyitis, Carcassonne Abbey & Mayor expansion, Cuba, Darjeeling, Felix: The Cat In The Sack, Hamburgum, If Wishes Were Fishes, Manhattan, Ming Dynasty, Mu and More, Race For The Galaxy, the new Power Grid card deck, and the Zooloretto expansion.  These were the games that Jay was hoping would be ready by the show. 

The reality, though, is that for the game industry, this time of year is like Christmas for the factory in Germany that makes the majority of German and American games.  They hire on extra people and work all day and night in the weeks coming up to Spiel.  Inevitably, with the massive increase in demand of production, they are unable to fabricate everything.  Jay learned a few days before the show that the English versions of Ming Dynasty, Mu and More, and Carcassonne would probably not be ready in time.

A couple of days before Spiel was to start we also learned that there was a production problem with Felix: The Cat in the Sack.  The game had been put together with two components missing.  The factory only had a limited supply of the omitted pieces, so only some of the needed games could be produced.  As it was his only new game for the show, Friedemann Friese understandably made the decision to have the small portion of Felix games that could be produced in time be the German version.  In my selfish opinion as a demoer, this was the worst game that we could be missing.  Of all the new games, Felix was the lightest and quickest to demo, and yet is still an excellent game.  In the time that I could explain a more involved game like Cuba, I could explain 4 or 5 Felixes.

By Tuesday afternoon, the only games that we had in the container were La Citta, the French version of Race For The Galaxy, and Amyitis.  Not an auspicious start.  But since we there wasn’t much else we could do at the moment, we decided to break out one of the copies of La Citta because I had never played it before.  About 2/3 the way through our game, I miscalculated and was unable to feed some of my people, and so fell behind.  With only 10 more actions before the end of the game, I couldn’t quite manage to regain a position of stability against Jay’s growing cities.  He ended up beating me by a good margin.

A misconception that I hear with some frequency is that it must be fun to be a demoer at a trade show because all you do is play games all the time.  I’m not saying that I don’t have fun(because demoing at tradeshows is one of the funnest things that I get to do), but at least for me, being a demoer means that I don’t get to play games.  People who sit down to learn a RGG game often expect that I will be playing the game with them, but if I become involved in playing a game, that means I will be unavailable for 1-2 hours to teach or help other potential customers.  Spiel 2007 was no exception to the rule, and as it turns out, that game of La Citta that I played with Jay was the only game that I was able to play during the week.

In the evening we went to our “little secret” in Essen which is a tiny storefront pizza place with only 4 tables.  Once the show is in full swing, all the regular restaurants become packed and it’s next to impossible to eat dinner in less than 2-3 hours.  The Express Pizza place, however, makes delicious personal pizzas in about 7 minutes, so it’s no wonder that last year that their cook knew what we would order since we started eating most of our dinners there.

This year, I thought I’d try something a little different so I ordered the “Marinara” pizza.  I was expecting a simple pizza with a red sauce.  Imagine my surprise when the pizza that was placed in front of me had onions tiny little grey lumps.  The lumps….tuna fish.  Of course it made sense afterwards…marinara…the sea.  Let’s just say that I’m not used to having fish on my pizza.  The funny thing is that it wasn’t half bad.

Tuesday night I brought a copy of Amyitis with me to bed to work through with the pieces before I fell asleep.

By Wednesday morning, everything for our booth had been delivered, including the refrigerators, cabinets and shelves, and after a couple of hours of arranging the chairs and tables in the demo area, we finally settled on what we felt was an optimal configuration.  The larger tables were staggered throughout the booth.  We placed six “bar” tables which are round, small and almost at chest height around the perimeter of the booth to give quick rules explanations to passersby who wanted a brief overview instead of playing a full game.

The German demoers that Jay had hired weren’t going to arrive until about 4:00pm, so I had a little time to run around the halls and get a start on my shopping.  By this point, a good number of publishers and retailers were close to having their booths completed, although it was clear that others would be working late into the night.  I stopped by the Pegasus Spiele booth to ask about their new game, Robotics.  It turned out that we weren’t the only ones waiting on games.  Pegasus was being told that the earliest Robotics would arrive was on Saturday, if at all. 

It was nice to see what some of the publishers had done with their booths.  Phalanx had made their booth into what appeared to be a 1920’s bar, complete with demoers in black speakeasy-ish clothes for their new game Chicago Poker.  Drei Magier Spiele had several games out on tables along with a blackout tent to show Nacht Der Magier.  Kosmos’ booth was in the same place as last year and had many new games including one that looked unlike anything I had seen before, Die Kleine Hexe.  It had a platform supported by 4 rods at the corners of the base. Rising up from the base were tall cardboard houses with plastic roofs.  On top of the supported platform (which I assume is supposed to be the sky) a player holds a small ball that has a magnet inside.  Just underneath the platform, a chain with a magnet will stick to the underside of the platform if you hold the ball close enough to the top.  Hanging from the bottom of the chain is a cardboard witch riding a broomstick.  I didn’t stick around long enough to learn the complete rules, but it looks like you try to move the witch around the little city to various color coded destinations by moving the magnetized ball without accidentally knocking over the roofs of the houses.

Zoch has a new version of Bausack out with nicely done white and red pieces.  For the show, they had a few copies of versions with larger fist-sized pieces.  They came gunny sacks which, with the larger pieces, probably weighed 15 pounds.  Czech Games Edition, the offshoot of Czech Board Games was relegated to the Galleria area that has some fair-type of activities for kids, such as an inflatable slide and a life-sized tablesoccer game, where kids can strap their hands to the poles while others manipulate them.  I don’t remember this area, which is not one of the main halls, being used last year by exhibitors last year, so maybe this is a sign that Spiel is growing even larger.

A little before 4:00p our German demoers started showing up so we broke out the few more games that had arrived and been deposited in our container: Cuba, Hamburgum, and Amyitis and played through a few rounds of each to become familiar with the rules.  We also moved boxes of the games into one of our offices so when our supplies at the desk became low, we wouldn’t have to go outside to the container to replenish our supply.  In addition to the games, we received a pallet of posters that Jay had made from the artwork on the Race For The Galaxy cards to give out to people who wanted one. 

Wednesday evening, we finally received a shipment of the English version of Race For The Galaxy and Darjeeling.  The demoers had already left to go eat and play through some of the games, so it was me to unload the new pallets of games and move them into the office.  I brought copies of Cuba and Hamburgum back to the hotel to run through them on my own in the hotel diningroom.  At about 10:30p Jay came up and said he was rewriting the rules to Powergrid and wanted me to proofread them(something I often help him to do) as soon as possible, so I pulled my computer out and started editing.  Because he gave me a first draft, I found several things that needed revising in the new Powergrid rules.  Jay gave up working on my suggestions at about 12:30a, but I still wanted to review the games I needed to teach, so I didn’t make it to bed till about 2:00a (reading rules till I couldn’t keep my eyes open anymore).

Thursday morning it was hard to believe that Spiel 2007, the event I look forward to all year, was going to open its doors to the public in just a few hours.  In the halls there is a little bit of hectic buzz as people try to finish prepping before the customers.  Then there are a few of us who use this time, once we’ve done what we can to prepare the booth, to run around and make our purchases when there aren’t any crowds.

Once the doors open, the usual flood, and I do mean flood, of people immediately flows into the halls.  It really is amazing to see, as people start camping out in front of the doors an hour or more before the show opens to the public.  Some rush to a particular booth hoping to get there before a publisher’s limited supply is gone.  Others run to find the very limited open gaming tables and camp out so that they can play some games.

Here is an overview of the games we were showing:

Cuba: You are a businessman in Cuba and via your plantation as well as through manipulation of the parliament, you produce goods, build buildings and sell the products for money or trade them in for victory points.  In each of 6 rounds, the players will each be able to choose to do 4 of 5 different actions, and then “vote” to see who will decide which 2 of the 4 visible bills will become law.  To vote, the players use the number printed on their unused action card and then “buy” votes through a blind bid of your money.  The new laws, as well as the remaining old ones, are resolved, there is some end of the round cleanup, and then you rinse and repeat.  After 6 rounds, the player with the most victory points wins.  While the generation of resources had been done before, Cuba has a couple of clever twists with production that requires some planning each round.  But it is the parliament mechanism with the different potential law combinations that makes this game unique and interesting.  Apparently I’m not the only one who liked Cuba, as we sold out of all the copies we had early Sunday morning

Amyitis:  You are one of the foremen hired by King Nebuchadnezzer to build the magnificent gardens for his wife Amyitis.  The game proceeds in rounds which each end when all the players pass. You have one of 3 relatively simple actions on your turn, either hire workers that do a variety of tasks, and who also become more expensive as a round progresses, move the camel caravan which will allow you to either improve one of your resource generating centers, or plant flowers into the garden.  This will, in turn, allow to to improve some of your tools, or give you victory points.  This game is all about making lots of small decisions (which people should I hire this round?, what tiles should I build on?, what actions are better for me at this moment?, etc…) Just like Caylus, and Yspahan aren’t for everyone, I’m sure there will be a couple of people out there that may be neutral about Amyitis, but I think it’s very clear that Ystari’s string of hits is unbroken.

Race For The Galaxy: There’s no denying the similarity between RFTG and San Juan.  In both, each round the players choose an action which triggers something for everyone plus a bonus for the player(s) who chose the action.  Also in both, the cards can be used as multiple things, as the object that is printed on the card, as money, and as a type of good.  The difference between the two is that RFTG adds complexity by introducing variations of the things you are trying to build, and so adds depth to the decisions you get to make between building your cards or using them for money.  You also have a wider variety of options for creating victory point producing machines.  If you like San Juan and you want to take it to the next level, or if you felt that San Juan was a little too light for you, then I’d recommend giving Race For The Galaxy a try.

Hamburgum: Yes, it has a rondel.  No, it’s nothing like Antike or Imperial.  That’s like thinking that Carcassonne and Factory Fun must be similar because they both include tiles that must match up when put together.  In Hamburgum, the players gain prestige via building parts of churches.  The game has some nice subtle forms of player interaction, as buildings that players can use to increase their production are limited, and as they increase the number of ships, which allows a greater quantity of product to be sold at one time, this often results in the reduction of shipping space on the other players’ ships.  I think pretty much everyone who played Hamburgum enjoyed it, and was surprised that it not only moved quickly, but lasts shorter than the other rondel games.

La Citta:  An oldie, and I only had to teach it once, but the guys I taught it to loved the game so much that I think I’m going to be pulling this one out at least a few times over the next year.

If Wishes Were Fishes – This one has already been out in the States, and was already released in Germany as well, so I think that may be why I wasn’t asked to demo this one very much in the beginning.  Strangely, though, on the last day of the show, I was asked to teach it several times.  One of those was prompted because a group of women came up asking to play a game that was a little bit on the lighter side because they were burned out.  I taught them IWWF and they really enjoyed it.  Funny side story…I don’t know if there’s a general aversion to worms or what, but several times during the show, I witnessed kids giggling as they picked up or just looked at the purple rubber worms.  Equally frequently did their mothers kind of freak out when the kids tried to get them to touch the worms.  C’mon, it’s just a glob a rubber shaped like a worm, not an actual worm!

Manhattan – Not much to say about this one.  It’s a reprint of the old classic.  No one asked for me to demo it.

A big part of our booth running smoothly is due to the German demoers we had this year.  Some of them had helped out last year, but the majority were doing it for the first time this year.  For the most part, they were responsible for teaching Germans how to play our games, concentrating primarily on the games that Rio Grande primarily published on their own (If Wishes and Race For The Galaxy) but some of them did a great job of teaching the games in English as well.  We also had 2 women working the desk to take money, manage Jay’s meeting schedule, lend out demo copies of games, restock the games on the shelves, and help match up demoers with customers who wanted whatever game taught.

Every one of our German crew was conscientious about the jobs they were doing and it was truly a pleasure to work with them.  My one regret was that during the week when they went out for dinner and to play the games in the evening that I didn’t accept their invitation to join them.  My reasons for no accepting were two-fold.  In part, I thought that I could review the games more quickly if I did it on my own and as I had other work to do in the evening.  The other reason was that I didn’t feel as confident about my ability to participate in a social evening if all of the conversation was going to be completely in German.  This fear of my mine might have been unfounded since they seemed to have greater confidence in my ability to communicate in German.  I do have to admit that my comprehension of German has increased since last year.  I was able to make my way around the city, buy things, eat at restaurants, and engage in conversation with people with only occasional references to my pocket German dictionary.  Next year I think I’ll even leave my book of German verb conjugations and German phrase book back at home since I didn’t refer to either one of them once this trip and they contribute to the maximum weight of my luggage (that I went over this year!).  I did receive a few compliments about my attempts at speaking German, which I attribute to the quality of my German tutor. 

So that’s pretty much all I have to say (so far) about Essen 2007.  Hopefully over the next several weeks I’ll be able to give you some feedback on the many games I stuffed into my bags.  Oh, I almost forgot.  I got the greatest gift this year from my friends Tony & Heidi. A week before I left for Germany, Heidi called me and said, and I quote, “I have a big surprise!”. 

The first thing out of my mouth was, “You’re having a baby?!”

She replied a bit sullenly, “No.  Why does everybody always say that?”

I said, “Well, then you have to stop leading into conversations like that then.”

She then told me what the surprise was.  Tony was being sent to Germany, more specifically Cologne for several weeks starting on Monday.  They were going to send him back home on Saturday, but he wouldn’t need to take anything home with him. So he could meet me in Essen, bring an empty large suitcase to my hotel, and then bring the same filled suitcase with him when he returns back to the states on Saturday.  And that’s exactly what happened, except we had enough time for a nice dinner and dessert in the city center before Tony had to catch his train back to Cologne.

As I said to Heidi after she explained what the surprise was going to be, “That’s a better surprise than a baby!”

© 2007 Scott Tepper

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Comments:

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Thanks for the great report Scott, it was a very interesting read! By the way, does this mean that La Citta and Manhattan will be available in the US soon?! :-D Posted by Tom Rosen on Oct 22, 2007 at 07:24 PM | #

Scott, thanks for teaching me games at Essen!  I hope that you had enough time to fill that extra suitcase with games!  If not, I could have sorely used the extra space… Dale Posted by Dale Yu on Oct 22, 2007 at 07:29 PM | #

Tom, Yes, both La Citta nd Manhattan should both be available in the US.  I would guess in about 4-5 weeks. Dale, Unlike he two previous years, this year I took 2 extra days to do some sightseeing and in the process, I ended up overpacking.  Between my clothes and the games I bought (which I spent 3 hours Sunday night trying to nest), I didn’t have enough room, and had to throw some of my clothes away.  In the end, when I got to the airport, they fined me (ok, not me, but my bags) for being overweight. Posted by Scott Tepper on Oct 22, 2007 at 07:52 PM | #

Thanks, that’s great news Scott! :-) I can’t wait for these, especially La Citta.  Have been tempted to buy a German version for a while, but am glad I’m waiting anxiously for the English version. Posted by Tom Rosen on Oct 22, 2007 at 07:54 PM | #

Ha ha… It wouldn’t be likely that you get fined for being overweight… You’re pretty slim amongst some of the gamers that I know! I did pretty well with my clothes.  In total, they only weighed 5.5 pounds in the bag.  I wore my heavy sweater, blue jeans and jacket home.... And it’s a good thing too—my bags were almost over the limit too!  I had 800 grams to spare between them Dale Posted by Dale Yu on Oct 22, 2007 at 07:55 PM | #

Scoot forgot to mention that he also had a lot of conversations in French. The guy is gifted, for sure !!! Cyril Posted by Cyril Demaegd on Oct 23, 2007 at 03:27 AM | #

Nice report, Scott.  I’m amazed you could remember and write all of that so coherently with so little sleep! It was especially funny imagining you sleeping soundly with your arms wrapped around your freshly opened Amyitis box.  Rules learning through osmosis, right? As to tipping in Germany, 5-10% is totally acceptable, since service is included in the menu prices.  In Berlin, at least, it’s normal just to round the bill up and add a Euro or more, depending how expensive the bill is.  You never leave it on the table, however.  Instead you just give it to the waiter/waitress together with the cost of the meal and say “Stimmt so” (sound familiar?) which means “keep the change.” If you don’t have exact change, you give them your money and say how much you are giving them total, as opposed to what they should give back to you (Example:  the bill was 17.10, I give them a 20 Euro bill and say “19” and they give me back a Euro). Posted by Jeff Allers on Oct 23, 2007 at 08:00 AM | #

Cyril, (blush!) Thank you, although my French is pretty rusty, I did get to explain Cuba, Darjeeling, and Race For The Galaxy in French, and the demoees were pretty appreciative of that(and I have to admit, it’s a lot of fun for me to do and lets me think that the years studying French in school weren’t wasted). Jeff, Regarding bedtime with rules...you’re not so far off the mark.  A couple of nights I would sit in bed with the gameboard and pieces in my lap.  As I’d get drowsy, I’d put the pieces on the floor.  A few mornings I’d wake up and have to navigate around the game on the floor. Posted by Scott Tepper on Oct 23, 2007 at 09:29 AM | #

Scott, I too was impressed at your language skills.  I really had thought that the only French that you knew consisted of: “I fart in your general direction” and “I wave my private parts at your aunties.” Dale Posted by Dale Yu on Oct 23, 2007 at 09:36 AM | #

Dale, I actually didn’t know how to say the word “fart”, so one of those two phrases was beyond my scope.  I guess my French teachers didn’t think that that was a word that would be crucial to French conversation.  But I’ve corrected that oversight.  I just looked it up.  Now I’m ready for anything. Posted by Scott Tepper on Oct 23, 2007 at 10:38 AM | #

I as well learned one important new word in German, and I think you were there for my lesson—but I’m not sure how often I’ll get to use it in my games explanations! Dale Posted by Dale Yu on Oct 23, 2007 at 10:42 AM | #

Scott, I can’t believe you hadn’t tried La Citta.  It is truly one of RGG’s older gems.  I can’t wait for the reprint.  Count me in as one of the interested in whatever Ystari brings out (ie Amyitis).  Is RGG bringing out the Mykerinos expansion? Also… how did you learn German?  I’d love to go to Essen (and if planned with time, it could be next year), and knowing some German could come in handy.  Rosetta Stone?  :) Posted by Robert Ramirez on Oct 23, 2007 at 03:08 PM | #

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